Wednesday, May 12. 1965 University Daily Kansar
Page 9
News Bureau Head Links Students, Home
By Eric Johnson
"Hello, KU News Bureau?" "Yes, this is the News Bureau."
"My daughter is writing a report on Kansas and she needs a Jayhawk. Could you send her one?"
"Yes, where should I send it?" "Roselle, Illinois."
This is the conversation between a helpful Illinois father and Tom Yoe, director of the KU News Bureau.
As head of the KU News Bureau, Yoe handles many such requests each week, although the request from Roselle, ill., was further away than most.
YOE. SITTING in a cluttered office in the basement of Strong Hall across from the University Post Office, is in charge of most of the information leaving the campus in the form of news releases.
The KU News Bureau sends news releases to hometown newspapers, radio and television stations, and the wire services. These releases cover a variety of subjects including students honors and speeches to be given by prominent visiting lecturers.
Preparing and distributing these releases has been Yoe's steady job for 19 years.
A native of Independence, Kansas,
Yoe started his career in journalism
CORE Asks For Workers This Summer
The Lawrence chapter of the Congress On Racial Equality (CORE) is seeking volunteers for summer work in Louisiana, Florida and North and South Carolina.
Workers are needed for any length of time throughout the South this summer, according to Mildred Dickeman, assistant professor of anthropology.
"Those who volunteer would have to be self-supporting," Prof. Dickeman said. "This means they would need to have approximately $15-25 a week. Lawrence CORE would consider assisting worthy volunteers to some degree and we will try to arrange for transportation. Having a car is not a prerequisite for volunteers," she explained.
"The work would primarily be in voter registration. The volunteers will canvass and interview the people as well as train them to fill out the registration forms for voting in their states.
"Applicants from this area will be screened by the Lawrence chapter of CORE and following recommendation will be sent to the South," said Prof. Dickeman.
Applications for volunteer work with CORE for this summer may be obtained from Prof. Dickman; Richard Burke, assistant professor of human relations; and Michael Maher, assistant professor of zoology.
The applications should be returned by the end of next week.
early. "My parents published a weekly newspaper in Independence and I grew up around the print shop. It was just natural for me to go into journalism I guess." Yoe said.
YOE WENT to high school in Independence and strengthened his attraction for journalism there. "In Independence, there was a competent high school journalism teacher, which was rare in those times, who got me off to a good start." Yoe said.
Newman Yoe was editor of the high school yearbook and said he was probably the only person now at the University to have the same distinction he has had. He has edited four yearbooks.
Continuing his education at the junior college in Independence. Yoe related how he managed to secure editorship of the yearbook two years in a row.
"There were more freshmen in the school than sophomores and my opponent was a sophomore. There were also more boys in the school than girls, and my opponent was a girl. So I got elected." Yoe said.
When Yoe came to KU in 1937 he entered what was then the Department of Journalism and received his B.A. degree in 1939. While here, he edited his fourth yearbook, the Jayhawker.
Yoe was a freshman in the junior college and the post of editor was an elective position. He said that freshmen almost never gained the revered position.
In editing the "Jayhawker," Yoe gave the impression that he worked a little harder than his modern counterparts. "In those days, the editors cropped the pictures, fitted them on the page, wrote copy, did the layout, wrote cutlines, bundled it up and sent it to the printer," Yoe said.
"I WORKED HARD for the editor when I was a junior and I got the job. The job paid $40 a month and I needed the money. The house bill was $48 a month, so it was a good job." Yoe quipped.
After graduation in 1939, Yoe went to work for a company in St. Louis, which published trade magazines. "I found myself editing a magazine for managers of country clubs called, "Club Management." I didn't know much about club management, but I learned a little," Yoe said.
"I can remember staying up till the wee hours of the morning working on the "Jayhawker" and then leave by the fire door (we couldn't get locked in in those days) to take the bundle to the Hotel Eldridge where I mailed it." Yoe said.
"I ALSO EDITED a magazine for banks and bankers in seven states west of the Mississippi. There happened to be a war going on in Europe at the time and so I went to work for Uncle Sam at $21 a month."
Yoe, a Phi Beta Kappa who insists he couldn't make it now with the raised standards of the group, was placed in Officer Candidate School and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the infantry.
Yoe insisted that his career as an Army officer was uneventful. "I never got shot at—that is by the Ger-
ratronize Kansan Advertisers
Tom Yoe
After World War II, Ie returned to St. Louis and his old job in January of 1946. "I liked St. Louis before the war." Yoe said, "but found I didn't like it afterwards. So, when the opportunity came to come to KU, I took it." Ie accepted the post as director of the KU News Bureau in July.
"When I came here, the Navy had the west wing of Strong, and the News Bureau was set up between plasterboard partitions on the north side of the rotunda. Our mimeograph room was in what is now the elevator shaft." Yoe said.
mans or Japanese, some of my trainees might have though. I'm not sure."
Besides his many duties as director of the News Bureau, Tom Yose is also faculty adviser for the Jayhawker yearbook at KU. Some of Yose's educational philosophy shows through when he talks about his advisorship with the Jayhawker.
IT WAS AT least cool in the summer with the breezes blowing through. However, in the winter when the wind was out of the north just the right way it was almost unbearable." Yoe replied.
"The Jayahawker can be a great educational experience for editors and business managers; there are educational values not present in producing a yearbook which comes out in one big chunk." Yoe said.
Producing a yearbook in magazine type sections involves some added problems. Yoe said, "We consider the Javwhaker as a place where they (the staff) can learn to handle problems and they can learn to overcome them with their own initiative rather than us standing over their shoulders."
"WE REALLY don't do a whole lot of advising. We just keep them heading down the right path." Yoe said. He accepted the post as adviser after the Jayhawker ran into problems in the early 1950s. Yoe stressed the fact that the Jayhawker had been going strong for 67 years without the faculty's help.
Yoe, a tail man with a head of white hair cut in a crew cut, seemed comfortably situated in his News Bureau office with the accumulated clutter of his 19 years in the office around him in bookcases covering three walls.
Yoe said the News Bureau also handled inquiries like the one from Roselle, Illinois. "Sometimes the answer can be given in a post card reply, however, sometimes it takes three pages of copy," Yoe said.
"We don't really do much student news, we don't operate on the 'breathin' and alive school," as Yoe called it. "Some news bureaus will take a picture of John Doe reading a book in the library or walking to class in the morning and send it back to the home town paper." Yoe remarked.
Yoe described his job as "getting the news of the University's students and staff out to any place it might be used. We don't try to handle everything. During the demonstrations we didn't do much, all the 'Kansan' people and 10 or 12 others were scurrying around doing it for us."
"What I have tried to do is what the late Don Pierce did," Yoe said. "He leveled with it. He never over-inflated or tried to gild the lily. I have always felt that the college news bureau should not make something appear greater than it is. I have followed this policy. Let's stick to the facts, the facts will speak for themselves. Newspapers appreciate candor and honesty."
IN REFERENCE to relative qualities of other college news bureaus, Yoe said, "I doubt that we are a lot better than most of them. In a college news bureau today it will depend on how much support you have from 'upstairs.'" Yoe said, "It's not a matter of what could be done, but what should be done with what we have to do it.
Working in the News Bureau, Yoe said people often come to him for publicity in the papers, he said he could write for them, but he was the worst person to try and get anything in the papers for them.
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